The Internet has become increasingly popular with end users, to the extent that advertisers have become attracted to this medium. A typical type of Internet ad is known as the banner ad, which is generally displayed at the top of a web page. Operators for popular news and other sites, for example, can increase revenue by selling banner ad space to advertisers.
Advertisers generally choose sites on which to purchase banner ad space based on one of two criteria. On the one hand, advertisers pay to have their ads shown to specific types of people. For example, a golf store might want to have its ads shown on a sports-related page, or to people who are likely to be interested in golf based on their browsing history.
On the other hand, advertisers pay to have their ads served in such a way that they are likely to be “clicked on”, so that the user will be transported to the advertiser's web site. One way to increase revenue generated from web advertising is thus to increase the “click through” rate of the ads shown. The click through rate of an ad is the frequency with which a user clicks on the ad to be transported to the advertiser's web site. Advertisers are attracted to sites that generate click through, and are usually willing to pay extra to those sites that can deliver increased click through. Targeted advertising is the practice of showing ads to individuals based on information about them, such as their web browsing history and demographics, to increase the click through rate.
A difficulty with targeted advertising is that advertisers familiar with the former criteria frequently specify quotas for the number of time their ads are to be shown. Sites sell ad space to many different advertisers, and contracts with all of these advertisers must be fulfilled regardless of the click through rates of the individual ads.
Regardless of which criteria is used, the allocation of advertisements must respect the capacity limitations of the ad space providers. There are limited numbers of opportunities to present ads on particular groups of sites. For example, there are a limited number of daily visits to sports-related web pages.
As demonstrated by the present invention, there has been an unrecognized potential to realize the benefits of targeted advertising while respecting quotas and to more effectively utilize available advertising capacity thus increasing value to advertisers and allowing content providers to charge more for their advertising space.